Nitrogen In Your Tires

Racing cars have been using nitrogen for many years.
UK is slowly going into nitrogen at many garages now.
Will our governments apply a tax? XX

Interesting stuff, but sounds rather like a scam to me:

The outside of your tyres is still exposed to the elements.
Normal air is about three-quarters Nitrogen anyway.

The biggest variable in tyre pressure according to the Formula 1 pit crews is whether or not the air is dry: water evaporating of condensing makes a bigger change in pressure than any single gas.

Mike is right - scam.

Thanks for the comments. Look like I just saved myself $20.
Regards, Ron

Tried nitrogen. Checked my tires less, because I did not want to lower the pressure in the tires. You need to return to the dealer if additional nitrogen is needed. I was told you can not “top off” nitrogen with air. If you do a lot of driving, and have your car at the dealer regularly, probably a good idea. But for the average “around the town” driver, I found the nitrogen to be a pain in the butt.

May as well use Helium-makes your car lighter. (:

It’s not necessarily a scam. Look at the new Nissan GTR Skyline. Its tires are nitrogen-filled to get the exact constant pressure which regular air doesn’t quite deliver. So in that sense, not a scam. On the other hand, the GTR is a purebred racing machine designed for high speeds and insane cornering. So unless you’ve got a car you’d use like that, it seems a scam for regular cars that just get driven around town.

As a scuba diver I learned that the air is 80% nitrogen. Is 20% going to make such a huge difference?

When in doubt, seek out The Straight Dope. See http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2694/is-it-better-to-fill-your-tires-with-nitrogen-instead-of-air for a good summary. Bottom line — not really worth spending $$ on.

As a member of several Corvette clubs and internet car clubs, the biggest advantage to Nitrogen is the fact that there is no water in nitrogen as oppossed to air. But, it’s agreed by our “experts” in the clubs and the internet that to pay extra for nitrogen is a waste of money. While proper inflation will improve gas mileage, the improvement is NEGLIGIBLE! Do not waste yout time or money. Of course if you are a professional racer, and have lots of sponsorship money, on a racetrack nitrogen may help improve control and handling at very high speeds.

All Air Force aircraft tires are serviced with 100% nitrogen. Pretty sure airliners use it as well.

The U.S. Army uses nitrogen for tire inflation as well as pressurization of the landing strut cylinders in Blackhawk helicopters. There are usually a few tall green nitrogen cylinders with hoses and regulators strategically placed on carts in the hangars for that purpose.

The primary benefit of using nitrogen is generally that it bonds with moisture that is present in atmospheric air to prevent the damage that free moisture can cause through oxidation of metal parts. For the Blackhawks, pitting of the cylinders could lead to seal failure, a major safety issue since the cylinders absorb a lot of impact force during hard landings. Additionally, as mentioned previously, air with water vapor expands and contracts much more than dry air does, causing greater variance of pressure.

For automobile tires, standard steel wheels become rusty at the bead mating surface over time due to moisture in atmospheric inflation air. The bead is a large difficult to correct area for pressure leakage, and leads to more rapid occurrence of low tire pressure problems. Aluminum wheels may also experience corrosion at the bead due to atmospheric air moisture, depending upon the alloy used, with the same result.

Beyond the minor inconvenience of low tire pressure reducing fuel efficiency slightly, it’s a much greater safety issue, causing excess flexation of the tire sidewalls. This builds up excessive heat in the sidewall materials, leading to premature tire sidewall failure, generally called “blow-outs”.

The tiny sidewall heights common in recent tire designs, the result of increasing wheel diameters while maintaining the same outer tire diameter, greatly increases the safety importance of proper inflation. The reduced sidewall heights allow very little pressure variance before sidewall damage can occur due to overheating. A tiny change in the air pressure on those much-wider-aspect-ratio tires also results in quicker uneven wear problems, with either increased center wear due to too-high a pressure, or increased outer edge wear due to under-inflation.

On an aside…

A simple issue of setting up an infrastructure to provide easy and common access to nitrogen for tire inflation illustrates in microcosm the huge issues with implementing alternative fuel sources, such as propane, compressed natural gas or hydrogen for use in combustion engine or fuel-cell-equipped automobiles. Nearly every busy intersection has a gasoline station, often with relatively easily installed electric air compressors present for inflating tires with untreated atmospheric air. Simply adding air-drying filters to all of those existing facilities would be a major expense. Imagine setting up the supply chain and the retrofitting process necessary to replace those existing facilities with nitrogen inflation facilities. Realize the relatively low amount of inflation gases used on a daily basis by each car in relation to the cost and complexity of providing the nitrogen-based service. Now imagine that problem when scaled-up, comparing it to the amount of LP, CNG or hydrogen needed to replace gasoline usage, and the greatly different types of processing, supply, transport, engine conversion and storage needs for using compressed gases versus those for using normally liquid fuels.

That’s the scope of that problem. Why would the average Joe pay $20 to inflate his tires with nitrogen rather than expend the tiny effort over time to monitor tire pressure and corrosion problems when using very cheaply available compressed atmospheric air? The cost-benefit equation is badly tipped against the technically “better” solution.

It’s not a scan but, it’s a way for a dealer to make some extra money. Like it was mention before, once you paid the dealer for the nitrogen you are hook to go there every time and refill the tires. Nitrogen will leak like regular air. If you get a nail on your tire, you are out of luck, especially if you are out of town. You can find tire repair almost anywhere but a dealer with nitrogen will be harder. Will you drive around, wasting gas to find one? Will you get your money worth using nitrogen in your tire or will be the same if you maintain your tires presurre with regular air? $20.00, even at half price is too much just to save a few pennies in gas mileage. You can do the same just by keeping your tire inflated properly.

Oxidation, how many people can see oxidation on wheels of newer cars. 10 year old car, maybe. Many cars today come with aluminum wheels where oxidation is less a consideration.

Safety will still be the same of the car owner does not check the tire presurre regulaly. Does it not matter if it’s regular air or nitrogen.

Oxidation on the tires it’s also a stupid argument. I just bought new tires for my daughter old car. I bought them because the tread was getting low, not because oxidation on the tires. The tires were more than 10 years old. The car was not driven that much.

Pretty bogus, if you like to impress people by telling them you spend money, go ahead and do it.

As to moisture problems, you can run compressed air through a dehydrator (commonly used in painting) and get the same effect (no moisture).

Tires are destroyed from the outside by tread wear, sidewall damage (keep away from the curbs), oxidation (particularly ozone) and heat.

Paying attention to regularly cleaning the outer rubber surfaces and applying some sort of rubber protective dressing will go a lot further towards getting rid of the oxidation problem.

As to rust on the inside of the rims, they’re typically coated with enamel paint and most people don’t keep their vehicles long enough for the paint to be worn down enough to rust. Now on the other hand if you intend on keeping your vehicle for 40 years, there might be some point in it.

And, if you’re not driving 100+ mph, the other supposed advantage is a moot point.

Here is the real poop on nitorgen.
Race cars use nitrogen because it contains less moisture or water than air. This moisture causes the air pressure to rise when the tire warms up to operating temperature.In your passenger car the pressure rises about 10 lbs. from cold to operating temp. at highway speeds.
With nitrogen tire pressures cold to hot only increase about 3 lbs. This is the benift for racers
The interesting point here is what is the correct operating pressure for a nitrogen equipped tire. Keep in mind that the tire recommended pressure is for AIR and the manufacturer knows the tire will gain about 10 lbs from cold to hot.
Will you be running the tire underinflated on the highway YES.you will.
I have done extensive tests with nitrogen and air comparison on my vehicle and discovered I needed to run 42 psi in my front tires and 38 psi in my rear tires in order to maintain even tread temperatures across the tread surface at highway speeds,
Tread surface temperature is the only way to determine the correct air pressure for your vehicle. The tread temp. is measured in three places across the face of the tire to determine even heat meaning the tire is distributing the load evenly across the tread surface.
Now on the other hand are you running your tires under inflated with AIR on cold tires as in city driving Yes you are. During city driving tire temp. will not be as high as highway driving.
Because the manufacturer is more concerned about tire failure at highway speeds. You wearing the corners off your tires in the city. Under inflated tires tend to wear on the outside edges.
The only real benifit on nitrogen in a passanger car is on aluminum wheels moisture will cause the wheel to oxidize only where the tire meets the wheel on the bead, over time, especially in colder climates. This will cause a slow loss of air pressure especially in cold temps.
There are no performance gains, no tire life gains, no side wall damages, just the hassle of getting nitrogen to top off your air pressure when you need to. This can be accomplised by buying a nitrogen cylinder for your personal garage at about $500.00

Best suggestion use air keep your tires slightly over inflated for city driving I suggest 5 psi more than recommended for front and 3psi for rear.

Hi Len,
Thanks for the info. It is appreciated.
Regards, Ron